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AN ORATION

HEFORE

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OF

Vermont Officers

IN THE

Representatives' Hall, Montpelier, Vt.,

NOVEMBER 7th, 1872,

Bv COL. SAMUEL E. PIISTGEEE,

HARTFORD, VT.

MONTPELIER :
POLANDS' STEAM PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT.

187-2.

AN ORATION

BEFORE

l;(t^ »=lnta« ^tHji^tg

OF

Vermont Officers,

IN THE

Representatives' Hall, Montpelier, Yt.,

NOVEMBER 7th, 1872,

By col. SAMUEL E. PI]^GEEE,

HARTFORD, VT.

MONTPELIER:
PoiiANDs' Steam Printing Establishment.

1872.

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MINUTES

MoNTPELiER, Vermont, Nov. 7, 1872.

The ninth animal meeting- of the Vermont OflBcers' Re-
union Society was held at the State House, at 10 o'clock,
A. M.

After the transaction of the routine business it was, after
considerable discussion, unanimously

Resolved, That non-commissioned officers be and hereby
are invited to join this society under the same conditions as
commissioned officers.

The question of the location of the next Re-union recur-
ring, a ballot was taken and the Executive committee were
instructed to call the same at Brattleboro, in October, 1873.

The Committee on nominations reported, and the Society
elected the following officers for the year ensuing :

Presidenf,, — Col. Redfield Proctor, Rutland.

Viei' Presidents, — Gen. Wm. W. Henry, Burlington, Col.
Thos. 0. Seaver, Proctorsville.

Treasurer, — Gen. P. P. Pitkin, Montpelier.

Recording Secretary, — Maj. James S. Peck, Montpelier.

Corresponding Secretary,— hi. John C. Stearns, Bradford.

Executive Committee, — Lt. Kittredge Haskins, Brattle-
boro, Capt. Richard Smith, Timbridge, Capt. Samuel E.
Burnham, Rutland.

The report of the Treasurer, showing a deficit of $11.39,
was presented and ordered on file.

After the appointment of Gen. Wm. W. He:nry as Marshal,
the Society adjourned till evening, when its members
marched to the State House to hear the address ))y Colonel
Samuel E. Pingree, of Hartford.

On motion, the thanks of the Society were tendered to
Col. PiNGUEE for his able and interesting address, and a
copy of the same was requested for publication.

Lieut. Benedict announced the death of Maj. Gen. George
G. Mkade, and oflered resolutions eulogistic of his charac-
ter and services, which were unanimously adopted.

The Society proceeded to the Pavilion to discuss the good
things prepared for it, and supper, toasts, speeches and rem-
iniscences filled the time till the small hours, when it ad-
journed by singing Auld Lang Syne.

JAMES S. PECK, Secretary.

ORATION.

Mr. President, Comrades and Fellow Citizens: — To
be summoned by your Executive Committee to the duty of
addressing my comrades and fellow citizens uj)on the occa-
sion of this, our ninth annual re-union, after these occa-
sions have been honored by the eloquence of divines, and of
statesmen, and of soldiers true and tried, bestirs in me, as
it well might, a degree of embarrassment and solicitude,
which, as on those occasions which we are here to commemo-
rate, a candid sense and appreciation of duty alone must
guide and sustain me through.

In the unrepublican governments of the older world, the
discharge of the soldier from his profession may be consid-
ered his discharge from duty, but in the United States of
America it is not so ; with us the muster-out redevolves upon
us those ennobling duties and responsibilities of the citizen,
which our soldiership held only in a temporary abeyance.

One of these duties, and prominent among them for the
fostering of those sacred virtues which guard with watchful-
ness and with wisdom the best interests of the State, — and
which, at least while any of this generation shall remain,
will contribute to their security — is the duty of keeping
green and sacred in our hearts the memories of those of our
comrades who died in war that we might live in peace ; the

duty of keeping green and sacred in our hearts, the memo-
ries and the deeds of those who offered, as well as of those
who made upon the altar of their country the noblest and
holiest sacrifice that ever falls to the part of the brave to
offer or to make — the sacrifice of life, that their country
might continue to have a name and a place among the com-
monwealths of the earth.

This is one of the primary objects of our Association.
In the fulfillment of this object, we impulsively recall with
what measure of astonishment we listened to the early notes
of the trumpet of war. The emotions which then thrilled
our souls seem to come back to us again, though not with
all their bewildering amazements, and the indefinite and
undefinal)le forecasts from the starting point in the spring
time of eighteen hundred and sixty-one, are now recollected
as tlie school-day experiences of a people untaught in the
science of arms.

To recall some of the incidents growing out of the deep
labyrinth of mysteries, of fears, of hopes, and of that de-
termined patriotism which moved the nation's heart on the
threshold of tiiat " impending conflict," and which called
into being that great barrier to treason and the nation's ruin,
I have chosen for the subject of my address to you to-
night "The Army of the Potomac," purposing to refer only
to some of the circumstances in which it had its origin, and
to the period of its organization.

It was with the infant history of this army that many of
us were early identified. It was through its great subse-
quent history that most of us shared its discipline, its strug-
gles, its achievements, and its devotion to the nation. It
was through its " days of labor, and nights devoid of ease,"
that that great company, who now swell the vast bivouac of

the nation's dead, were taken from our raijks, as offerings
for the nation's purification.

We are now in the midst of a period of calm reflection,
and can look back to the past from the stand-point of peace-
ful days.

When the eventful scenes of 1861 burst upon us, wc were
living under the government established by Washington. Men
were then among us whose memory and whose history were
in part cntcmporary with his. Under the benign opportu-
nities and influences of that government, our civilization had
pressed across the continent to the shores of the peaceful sea.
Peaceful enterprise had knitted together the remote States
and cities with an almost interminable net-work of highways,
and post-roads, and railways, and telegraph lines. Peace-
ful enterprise had penetrated the inland lakes and the
rivers with almost countless lines of water craft. Peaceful
enterprise had filled up the wilderness with a teeming popu-
lation of thirty millions of people, going forward with all
the customary pursuits of civilized life. Peaceful enterprise
had developed the mechanical arts and the manufactures,
and the fine arts had been adorned. Peaceful enterprise
had developed that genius which gave life to our commerce
and brought it into successful rivalry with the maritime
nations of the older world. Peaceful enterprise had given
life to that skill and cunning which published and fashioned
to the use of mankind the recondite agencies of steam
power. Peaceful virtues had disseminated education among
the masses, adorned the pursuits of sacred science, and so
enlarged the missionary operations and successes as to in-
vite the plaudits of the Christian world. Peaceful philan-
throphy, under the" fostering care of a government so gentle,
had invited the oppressed of Europe to participate with us
in these felicities. War seemed to be remembered no more,

8

while peace had contributed to the full, rounded measure
of our greatness, attained within the memory of men who
yet lived.

Guided as if with an Unseen Hand, our people had gone
forward on a mission of prosperity, philanthropy, and felic-
ity, unexampled in the world's history. Our ships of com-
merce were floating upon the oceans and in every sea, and
the kings, and princes, and merchants of all lands did rever-
ence and homage to our flag. How naturally were all our
energies, our hopes, and our expectations turned into the
gentle channels of these arts of peace. How foreign to
our sentiments, how estranged from our interests, how
unnatural to our intelligence, became the rude calculations
of humancst war. Separated from all the entangling com-
binations of the older nations by the broad ocean, har-
mony, policy, liumanity, and interest limited us to only a
liberal and peaceful intercourse with them.

With such a status, and with the open pages of our fathers'
history before us, the tender accents of their counsels still
lingering in our memories, and seeing all around us the
teeming fruits of their deeds of wisdom and of statesman-
ship— the offspring of a half century of almost undisturbed
repose, — could we loolc forward to the possibility of the
need of mighty armies to save our government from dismem-
berment and ruin ?

That this republic, so singularly blest of heaven — this
empire, so young, and yet so marvellous in its benificence
to the human race — so wonderful in the grandeur of its re-
sources, and so exalted in its relations with fellow States —
that this republic must purchase her perpetuity by the mar-
shaling of her sons in war's dread array, was a lesson which

9

her statesmen, her scholars, her people must be trained to
learn amid experiment, peril, and confusion.

Without the sad, yet fruit-bearing lessons in the school of
disaster, her peace-trained people would have poorly esti-
mated the magnitude of the approaching storm. With-
out the sad yet fruitful lessons in the school of dis-
aster, no sublime forecast of her sages could have organized
results from combination. Oratory in her golden circles of
expressive words yielded to the majesty of patriotism, but
knew not how to direct it. Philosophy acknowledged its
controlling might and was silent. Poetry only dared to
twine her fairest laurels for its In-ow, while all human states-
manship and all human wisdom seemed inadequate to com-
prehend the magnitude of the task before us. Our president
professed reliance on the better angels of peace. Our
eminent state secretary prophetically assured us that
three score days should bring us sunnier skies and a more
cheerful atmosphere, while grave senators could hardly wait
the in-gathering of the first faint levy of undisciplined
troops to see the rebellion ended. The press took up the
key-note of offensive action, and the public mind was be-
guiled into the contemplation of sounding peans of exulta-
tion over a prostrated rebellion.

Was there any difference between an unorganized body of
troops moving on to attack an enemy of unknown force, in-
trenched in chosen position, and in standing on the defens-
ive behind these intrenchments ? Such calculations seemed
to be held in contempt.

The venerable Scott, the great captain of his age, was
consulted, and, rising in the majesty of his years, he shook
his gray head iu disapprobation of an advance, until the
uniraiued legions were converted into soldiers. But

2

10

the impulse of the popular heart must be appeased
bv the venture, and the nation doomed to disappointment,
for the possibility of defeat had been entertained by none.
The President was as illy prepared to comprehend the
realities of the houi-, and as powerless of that genius
which was necessary to meet them, as his cal)inet, tlie
statesman, the press, or the people.

Our long devotion at the shrine of Peace had committed
our judgments against all the needed plans and preparations
for a rebellion so gigantic, and the severe discipline of dis-
aster must initiate the nation's eftbrt to save the State.
The startling shock of unsuccessful battle is needed to
enlighten, to exalt, and to direct the irrepressil)le patriotism
of a people so thoughtless of the magnitude of the nation's
salvation.

Scott, remonstrating with the warning voice of his famil-
iar science, nevertheless yields to the demands of the pop-
ular impatience — and the army of Gen. McDowell is moved
from Arlington, on Manassas, with little of the circumstance
and method of trained battalions, and returns with none. .

Of the necessity of that brief, disastrous campaign for
the disciplinary affliction of the nation's heart, i have spukeu.
Of the magnitude of the shock to the nation's sense, of
the strangeness of the gloom which it overcast, of the dis-
grace to our arms, the demoralization, the loute, the panic,
it is sufficient, comrades, to say of them, we never had occa-
sion to look upon the like again.

Yet disaster, route and panic though it was, and freighted
with responsibilities to startle and arouse, nevertheless it
left us with its rich heritage of instruction ; it opened the
public heart to a rectified sense of tlie powerlessness of
misdirected patriotism ; it warned the pul)lic mind that to

11

set upon the task before us without the preparatory disci-
pline which all history dictates for a starting point, would
result in failure. '' Who," asks the historian, " will ven-
ture to measure the consequences of actions, by the apparent
humiliation in which they have their origin?"

Tlie mysterious influences of that Power wliich enchains
the destinies of nations, over-ruling tiie mandates of sover-
eigns and the forethought of statesmen, often eliminate the
greatest events from the least commanding causes.
That over-ruling Providence, who had led the fathers
amid tlie storms and in the sunshine, and through persecu-
tion to success, testing their patience, and fortifying their
virtues amid sorrow and reverse, fitting them for the
sacred responsibilities of self government — that Providence,
through this dark disguise of our humility, was pointing out
to us the grandeur of our duties, and directing us to the
perfection of those great combinations essential to their
performance.

As we look back now with the light of experience to
direct our view, as we contemplate the trifling proportions
which the peace-trained president, and statesman, and peo-
ple accorded to a rebellion so stupendous, can we claim
that almost any price of disaster was too great to secure to
us the boon of instruction which the event inculcated ?

Thus the early and ill-conceived preparations for the con-
flict vanished in a single spasm, and the government turned
to the contemplation of graver responsibilities, and to a sys-
tem of preparation commensurate, in some degree, to the
vast proportions of the work before them.

Fixed and defined opinions and plans upon all subjects
connected with the raising, the organizing, and tlie patient
disciplining of great armies, and clearer views upon the

12

general conduct of vast military operations, were now re-
vealed in the clear light of the nation's necessities.

The veteran lieutenant-general, with head crowned white
with the frost of age, "'bending under infirmities incurred
in his country's service while carrying her flagoverso many
fields of victory," endows his comrades with the beacon
lights of his experience and wisdom, and lays down his
sword forever.

To what hands now, tried or untried, shall the great trust
be committed — the great trust of moulding the character
and shaping the future of the grand military and naval com-
binations and operations on which the national being now
hung trembling in the lialance against secession ?

But yesterday the united nation was wanting in none of
the resources of the first order of military scholars — to-day
she might see the alumni of her academy, ''with an ingrati-
tude more strong than traitors' arms," arrayed against their
Alma Mater.

Next to Scott, and now first in what remained of loyalty
on the army roster, stood the name of the youthful, though
not inexperienced soldier, McClellan.

Ripe in the perfection of the varied learning of the pro-
fession— though but just entered upon the threshold of mid-
dle life — he had added thereto the lessons of experience in
the great campaign of victories under his predecessor from
Vera Cruz to the Chapultepec, and with the allied armies
of France and Britain from the Alma to Sevastopol ; and
as if to endear himself to the American heart with
an almost inordinate confidence, he hail planned and exe-
cuted that series of brilliant victories in the Kanawha
valley, which secured to West Virginia her state sover-
eignty, and a new star to the constellation of states.

13

"While a strange fatality seemed to attend upon the steps
of all others," says a cotemporary, "in his department we
had never lost a battle." The President and the people
called him witii one voice from beyond the munntains, to
set upon the hazardous task uf havlnti; and securing the ca{)-
ital, and of creating from the ingathering masses of citizen
soldiers an army which should go forth to battle the enemy,
without the possibility of a repeated disaster to our arms.

Never in history did the common heart of a great pco[)le
turn with a warmer impnlse of aft'ection or a more un-
bounded trust on any, than did the people of his country on
General McClellan. AmJ it was with the hand of a master
that he entered upon his great undertaking. At no other
period amid the manifold seasons of tiial and perplexity,
which continued to recur until our government had
assumed the .<<tatus of a war power — at no other period
could the mantle of deeper trust, of weightier responsibil-
ity, or of more varied and erabarrast-ing duty, have fallen
upon tlie shoulders of any chief.

The resources of men — brave and devoted men — were
gatheiing to the camps on the l)anks of the Potomac, but
the vast material of an army was wanting, and its calcula-
tion was the work (^f genius and its [)rocurement the work
of time.

The ordering of camps of discipline and instruction, the
daily drill and preparation, and whatever pertained to the
evolution and regularity of great oi'ganizations, constituted
the- least considerable of the momentous responsibilities of
the commander-in-chief

The ultimate mission of this army was not merely the de-
fense of the national capital, but, for the great impinging
force, looking forward to the ultimate defeat and destruc-

14

tion of its counterpart, tlie o;reat confederate army of Virginia.
That objective point once attained and the rebellion was
sure to go down forever. In the plan for the sui-e fulfill-
ment of this mission there were other considerations to en-
gage the attention of the responsible head, besides, and far
reaching beyond, the purpose of winning a single battle.

That this army, which was destined to be regarded by the
nation as the wall of adamant for the shielding of the cap-
ital, and the military center of the combined operations for
the restoration of the Union — tiiat it should be prepared
for all the vicissitudes and varied fortunes incident to the
great campaigns of history, all the circumstances of the
strength and preparation of the enemy most clearly im-
pressed.

With the vast advantages which their defensive attitude
afforded, and which numbers were hardly adequate to over-
come— with a i^eople as thoroughly united in resistance to
our arms as tlie loyal States of the North in behalf of the
Union, — with an army as brave, as fearless and as demoted
as any in 'history — that army commanded by a general of
the first order of the military genius of the time, sup))orted
by the consummate skill and valor of such lieutenants as
Hill and Longstreet and Jackson, — no single defeat could de-
stroy, nor any single disaster appall tliem.

For the repeated defeat and ultimate destruction of this
grand confederate power, amid all the disadvantages inci-
dent to campaigns and invasions, all the skill, the valor, the
discipline, the energies and the ojoerations of the Army of
the Potomac and its commanders must be directed.

To win victories must l)e the aim — to turn repulse to the
account of luturc battles must evidence its self confidence
and its tuiyielding devotion.

15

While undergoing t';e long and laborious process of dis-
cipline and prc[)aration for a responsibility so fraught with
events and so big with tlie fate of free institutions, we cal-
culated not, nor could we then conceive, their great import-
ance to our success in the more trying realities of war.

That our army should grow into shape so slowly — that with
a proud and defiant enemy in our front we should be kept
upon the work of fortfying tlie capital in lieu of attempting
to raise the siege by battle, were circumstances as trying to
the patience of the soldiery of that army as to the people
of the country. That in the events developed as the scheme
of war passed into history, this disciplinary period was
sufficiently brief for the purposes in hand, the future his-
torian will never question.

Thus under the national depression attendant upon the
late disaster in the Manassas campaign, in the face of a vic-
torious and exultant enemy, the citizens of the North,
schooled only in the peaceful arts, many of them never hav-
ing seen an implement ol' war nor listened to a martial
strain, and with scarcely the nucleus of an organization
around which to form, in the brief space of seven months
are converted into one of the best ordered and disciplined
armies of modern history.

They found the -capital of their government naked and
defenseless, and the hearts of her chosen rulers failing them
from fear. They walled that city round about with vast
cordons of defenses, and with an intelligent forecast which
providently surveyed the requirements of an expectant peo-
ple, they did not forget that there was a power to destroy
as well as a city to save.

At length the army was in readiness to take the field.
The enemv, snuffing the battle from afar, and foreseeing

16

that the conflicts which should determine the fate of their
confederate empire would be inaugurated before the confed-
erate capital, had surrounded it and every avenue of its ap-
proach with a network of defences, and had summoned
thither their late ojf'enHive army for the purpose of defensive.
warfare, and the scene is changed from tlic camps of dis-
cipline on the Potomac to the battle fields of the Peninsula.

And here, on the threshold, as it were, of those Titanic
struggles which were almost constantly testing the skill and
valor of these confronting armies through the three years that
followed, was immifest the inestimnl)le vnluo of discipline
bestowed, the worth to the nation of the months devoted to
preparation, the self-sustaining contidence infused into the
various departments in this their baptismal experience in
the realities of war.

To single out a sjiecitic field more illustrious for comment
than any other, where, with scarcely an interval of repose,
the deadly struggle culminated in the classical week of bat-
tles, would seem invidious. The enthusiasm and heroic de-
votion which the men of that army carried into the perform-
ance of every duty devolving upon them in that memorable
campaign, surpasses all ordinary description.

Recall the willing toil, the nightly march and watch amid
the storms violent beyond precedent in that vast morass, the
bivouac before the long line of intrenchments, the ceaseless
crashing of shot and shell through the arching forests which
concealed our advancing parallels before Yorktown, the un-
complaining hands that turned so cheerfully from the rifle to
the axe or the spade and back again to the deadly skirmish,
the bold assaults through the entangled streams and upon
positions of unknown resisting force, the sublime exhibitions
of indift'erence to individual fate, while disease was making

17

one vast graveyard of that peninsula, — yet no heart falters
and no tongue complains.

It was now less than a twelve-month since these citizen
soldiers were in the undisturbed avocations of their varied
peaceful duties, having no forecast of the great contribu-
tion they were to furnish to the historic material of the
greatest insurrection of this or any age. It was less than
a twelve-month since all were sharing the felicities of their
pastoral and metropolitan homes, mingled in the scenes of all
the arts and pursuits which adorn and ennoble an enlight-
ened people. Go back through the long catalogue of the
chronicles of war, to the first syllable of recorded time,
and we look for but do not find a parallel to this.

The cause which had sped them on to this fitting stage of
preparation was the cause of free government, and its suc-
cess the world's last hope of freedom's permanence.

Those men were not unfamiliar with the glorious historic
record of their ancestry, nor of the correct interpretation
of the constitution and government which had been intrusted
to their guardianship. Obedience to that constitution and
the preservation of the unity of the multiplied iStates was
the burden of their patriotism and their devotion.

Dissimilar to any of the great armies of the world which
had come and gone before them, they "waited not on the
smiles of princes nor basked in the noon-tide of royal
favor." Their faith was drawn from the inspiration of the
oracles of the sagacious Washington, the eloquent Adams,
the philosophical Franklin, and the peerless Hamilton, the
pole star of whose ambition was to establish, to preserve
and to perpetuate, undimmed and undiminished, the rising
constellation of states.

18

As those sages of the revolutionary period had devoted
their lives and honor to the foundation and framework of
this building, so did these men, their children, devote their
lives and honor against the fatal heresy, the mad passion,
which now sought to tear the sti-ucture down. Ever mind-
ful of the conflicts amid which the Union was born, they
stopped not to calculate the cost of its preservation, but
earnestly and solemnly devoted themselves to this war's last
resort to save their heritage of freedom from dissolution.

Too little has been understood and appreciated by those
who wei-e not of them of this ruling spirit which animated
that noble body of American soldiers, — their steadfastness
for the sovereignty of their cardinal principle, the indissolu-
ble unity of the states, their fealty to that principle through
adversity and suftering and in the shadow of death, attested
by a faith in its ultimate vindication, as sublime amid re-
verse as in the hour of triumph — a faith by which they
sometimes fought, as in the tangled copse of the wilderness,
more than by sight, and which guided and sustained them
throughout the varying fortunes of their four years of mili-
tary life, and until the great object of their devotion was
crowned with success and the Union vindicated.

it was that ruling spirit, that intelligent faith in the ulti-
mate vindication of the government for which they fought,
that inspired them to the performance of those deeds of sol-
dierly grandeur which have allotted to them their peculiar
place, high on the roll of the great historic armies of the
world.

LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS

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